Full Information on the Given Theme is Absent

On March 23 the opposition Internet newspaper Ukrayinska pravda published a fascinating collection of temnyky, the “theme the day” bulletins circulated by the Presidential Administration to the editors of friendly mass media organs. We can safely assume that they are not sent to opposition media outlets, which might publish them as has now happened. The vast majority of them list an item laconically, usually in one sentence that on such and such a day some Western spokesman was critical of something happening in Ukraine, followed by the recommendation cited above. Sometimes they are longer and even positive as in the case of a Western program to prevent AIDS and call the event “relevant” with the recommendation that the German ambassador and head of the relevant parliamentary committee be quoted in the media reports. The point is that one gets the impression not of outright censorship but a sort of rallying the media troops of the presidential camp by recommending that unfavorable information simply be ignored and certain favorable information played up. What happens when these temnyky are ignored is not indicated, but in a country where the favor of those in power is important, they can safely be assumed to have a chilling effect and represent an attempt to restrict the right to know about things the authorities would rather that most people remain unaware of.

How serious is this really? These things and the harassment of opposition media are not exactly in conformity with contemporary Western standards of the freedom of expression, but if we go back just over thirty years to the Nixon years in the US or half a century to McCarthyism with its blacklists we can see that this is not the worst thing that has ever happened in the nations, which now seek to be a role model for Ukraine. In the Nixon years, an assistant attorney general even testified before a Congressional committee that the president’s inherent executive privilege gave him the right to use any means to collect any information on anybody he saw fit. This argument was, of course, found to be utterly ridiculous, but it did not stop then Assistant Attorney General William Rehnquist, who made it, from ultimately becoming chief justice of the United States.

I personally know about many more instances of skullduggery in independent Ukraine than I cannot write about, because it is virtually impossible to prove them under the currently level of official transparency according to the local legal standards and a not always quite independent judiciary. However, some historical perspective is in order. When Senator McCarthy was trying to find Communists in the State Department and the House Un-American Activities Committee was getting entertainers blacklisted in Hollywood, this place was ruled by one Joseph Stalin, who was putting millions in the Gulag and having anyone he liked put to death. When America was suffering the flaws of Richard Nixon, Ukraine was under Brezhnev, and there is a huge magnitude of difference in terms of of the two countries’ places on their paths of historical development.

It should also be recalled that Ukraine’s independence essentially fell from the sky into the lap of Communist Party and Youth League veterans who had been brought up to combat mercilessly any hint that there could ever be an independent Ukraine. The commitment to that independence or their verbal European choice among a number of such people cannot be said to be unshakable. Of course, the pressure should be kept up, but there is also a danger here. There is no shortage of people running the country who would be just as happy to turn their backs on Western values and return to the lap of Mother Russia should that pressure be too great. This would be a tragedy both for the West and for Ukraine. Thus Western righteous indignation should at times be tempered by perspective, tact, and restraint.